Can policy like legal drug use exist without legally allowing for unenforced crime though? Why are the two mutually exclusive in your mind?
Sure, but you will be paying more for that enforcement. From police, to courts, to prisons. You will also see increased prices as other costs, like insurance, go up. You have communities where businesses have left because of the crime. That affects people other than the freedom fighting addicts.
So this will again boil down to cost of personal freedom vs. subjugation to government policy for me.
Regarding police, courts and prisons, according to objective data, existing crime remains the same, and thereâs an obviously expected drop in drug related crimes. Sometimes data doesnât match our personally held beliefs and it can be weird when that happens, but if youâre wanting to lighten legal cost burdens youâre on the wrong track, per data.
Theft, which you referenced earlier, is a separate issue and pulling it in here, per data, is a straw man. When I see videos of retail thefts in SF they donât look like homeless drug addicts to me, they nearly always are ghetto âgibs me datâ types independent of drug convos. Now they may fit in reducing govt oversight in general, but imo California should ease up on gun laws too. Make it easier to defend property. But thatâs another can of worms.
Maybe true. But without crime rates and involved loss going up as documented, insurance rates would remain unchanged. At least relative to the topic at hand.
Iâm also a free market guy. Businesses should operate where they will be best positioned for profit, and without leveraging govt to control choice.
Given my work, I see the costs that drug addiction brings with it. It destroys towns and cities. I also know first hand that crimes go unreported. If anyone thinks that a town before drug addicts overran it has the same amount of crime as after, even accounting for drug crimes, they lack common sense. Drug addicts all commit crimes other than selling or possessing drugs. All of them do or will. They also foist their children on the state to care for.
So weâve discussed âdestroys towns and citiesâ across a few angles and with personal belief interjected. Data simply doesnât support.
Your take is to legislate, and thatâs your prerogative. Youâre a big government guy, I get it.
I still say cut entitlement and let people fuck themselves. Not my problem.
You donât have pick full âwokeâ or full âneoconâ. Itâs not a Super Bowl. You can allow freedom of choice while restricting entitlement money, youâre just choosing not to. And by default supporting govt propagated entitlement spending agendas to manage a problem that has existed since before legalization.
Anyways to pull an earlier comment around, the unfortunate division of left vs right is why I tend to vote Republican. In our âcheck yes or noâ system I primarily lean right, at least fiscally, and weigh fiscal policy above the rest. So I vote for that.
Unfortunately the Republican Party will lose its grip in time by trying to be a church by another name around social issues, to include drugs, and will consequently lose its grip on fiscal policy control.
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True. The crimes are usually committed in the pursuit of drugs or because drugs took all their money E.g. catalytic converter theft, car or home break-ins, shoplifting, etc. Would crime then go down if drugs were freely available so that addicts didnât have to âfindâ money to pay for them?
Would more people become addicts, or would it be about the same? Would more people OD, or less because of the steady, QCâed supply of drugs?
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A. Itâs what I actually see.
B. I work with the data. I work with the police. I work with the hospitals. I know that not everything is reported.
See, I never said any of that. This is an example of someone, in this case you, digging your heels in and fighting a losing battle. Youâve done the equivalent of playing the race card.
Per the data, you would see it anyways. Youâre attributing a belief over the top.
You didâŠ.
You mean if drugs were free? Because they would still need to find money to pay for them.
In Portugal, it went up.
And the costs arenât just in crime. When an addict overdoses, that costs money. When their kids are taken away, that costs money .
Show me.
If we drop Small Pox on China it will stop the flow of Chinese drugs and solve these addiction problems.
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Correct, free drugs that have been QCâed and individually dosed to help prevent accidental ODs. Remove the need to âfindâ money for drugs, and it should significantly reduce the drug related crime rate.
In Portugal, did they differentiate between users and addicts/junkies? Because I think that is an important distinction.
So again, we pay.
Yeah but thatâs super cheap in comparison. Pay $5 to save $50. Drugs, at cost and in bulk, are really pretty cheap.
And also, in general, I would likely be in favor of paying more for a program that reduces OD deaths, whatever that program may be.
Your entire dialogue propagating increased expense to manage on the premise of government regulation. I canât quote the entire conversation.
Drugs are illegal, well many are, and Iâm ok with it. It benefits society nothing to make something like fentanyl legal. The same with heroin or meth or crack. We pay and get no return. Youâre argument changes none of that. The only things that change are how much is paid, but you pay regardless. Nothing is free. Only communists think that.
And how much do we pay to care for their kids? How much do we pay them when addiction makes them unemployable? How much do we pay to care for them when they get AIDS?
So youâre also a common good guy. These observations arenât attacks. And it makes sense why you would be a big government guy.